The Writing Centre provides free writing instruction for all undergraduate and graduate students. The purpose of the centre is to promote and enhance academic writing skills, and the program offers individual writing consultations, drop-in hours, writing workshops, and in-class workshops or lectures arranged at the request of instructors. Writing workshops designed to suit the specific needs of a particular course or discipline are developed in collaboration with instructors and in some cases end up becoming part of a course.

Students book individual consultations at the Writing Centre in advance and bring either previously marked papers or papers in progress for constructive feedback. A writing professional or a student tutor will assess the major strengths and weaknesses of the paper brought in and discuss revision strategies with the students to enhance their understanding of the essential requirements of academic writing such as focus, analytical structure, argument, and paragraph development. Sentence-level writing problems will also be discussed to teach students how to communicate their thoughts clearly and precisely in agreement with the conventions of written English.

The desired outcome of a consultation at the Writing Centre is to help students understand how to engage in the tasks of academic writing and to teach them to revise and edit their papers in agreement with expected standards. Students are encouraged to conceive of writing as part of the learning process and to commit themselves actively to the long-term goal of writing at a professional level. Individual consultations are scheduled for 50 minutes per student.

Drop-in hours are for short specific questions about writing and each student is allowed 15 minutes with a tutor.

The Writing Centre has resources on all aspects of academic writing in the resource room and on the website, which provides links to major academic writing sites in North America.